


Loving Backwards

by GalaxyGazing



Category: Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Parent/Child Incest, Time Travel, Timecest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyGazing/pseuds/GalaxyGazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One boy’s heartbreak happened twenty years ago, the other’s, a half hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving Backwards

_"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard_

_\--_

 

The sunlight is white gold that creeps through and around the cracks of the thin curtains.

It’s eight a.m. when Lewis and Wilbur are both eighteen, lying recumbently in what Lewis would call his parent’s house and what Wilbur would call his grandparent’s house, neither of which are home.

Lewis sits up and stares at the encroaching sunlight like it puts him in a trance. Wilbur lays face down, chest to mattress, back to the cool air of the room.

Ten minutes go by before Lewis can’t wait on Wilbur to wake anymore. He puts a hand to Wilbur’s back, just a touch, and asks, “Hey. You awake?”

“Barely,” Wilbur mumbles.

“Can we talk?”

“Can it wait?”

“No.”  
  
Wilbur turns his head to the side, brown eyes creaking open, pupils adjusting to the light streaming in. He brings a fist to his face to rub one of them, blinking a few times, “What’s up?”

Lewis sighs. The blonde is sitting with his knees folded up to his chest, bed sheet draped over them. His glasses aren’t on yet and his hair is mussed.

“This whole situation,” He opens his palm face up in a subconscious gesture, like it could possibly signify the gravity of the entire circumstance, “You’re awfully calm about it. You don’t think it’s…”  
  
Lewis swallows hard. He should have formed the phrase in his head before he began talking. He searches frantically for a word that would neutrally explain his feelings because he truly doesn’t know how Wilbur was taking this just yet. 

He didn’t want to label it as something horrible if Wilbur didn’t think it was so. He also didn’t want to paint it as something good if it was, perhaps, the opposite. Eventually, he settles on, “…abnormal?”

When Wilbur hears this he all but rolls his eyes, like the conversation wasn’t worth waking him for, “Well, think of it this way: No one’s invented a time machine before you, so no one knows the _normal_ way to use it. Maybe going back in time and fucking your dad would be a common thing to do if time machines were more available.”

Lewis flinches a little bit and his face grows hot, “Please don’t…use that language. And I doubt it.”

Wilbur shrugs, half of his face still buried in the pillow. It does not escape Lewis that Wilbur had slept face down because certain last night activities had left him pained.  
  
“All I’m saying is: don’t worry about it. I’m not worried about it.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you come from the future. You seem to be a lot more easygoing about off the wall ideas.”  
  
“Mmm…” Wilbur says, deciding this discussion was time better used sleeping and turning his face back down into the pillow. He is far too tired for the next suggestion to actually be taken seriously—and Lewis suspects he says it just because he enjoys flustering him—but in a voice muffled through pillow fluff Lewis hears, “I know a couple better ways you can use that mouth right now.”  
  
“You do know this is going to be, like, emotionally scarring for me when you’re born, right?” Lewis says, temper rising, voice raised slightly in an effort to get Wilbur to take this more seriously, “And then I’ll raise you for a couple years and then, oh my god.”  
  
“Look. Look how worried I am, Lewis,” Wilbur says, literally without moving.  
  
“Yeah, you don’t have to be worried; it’s easy on your end. I have to watch you grow up.”

Realizing that he is not going to be able to get back to sleep, Wilbur finally, reluctantly, rolls over to give Lewis his full attention. His next words are spoken slowly and evenly, “So what are you saying, you want to stop?”  
  
“Well…I didn’t say that.”  
  
“I mean you kinda already crossed that line, man. Why not stick to your decision? _Keep moving forward_ , all that jazz.”  
  
“Look, I’m just saying this is a unique situation, I’m sure you can appreciate that.”  
  
Lewis turns to gaze back at the curtains again. Wilbur stares straight ahead at the ceiling. After a three second beat he sits up, “Fine, okay. Take some time for yourself. I won’t visit you for a while. I’ll come back in like, a month, hopefully that’ll give you some time to sort things out.”  
  
Lewis looks over but doesn’t respond so Wilbur continues,

“And if you think it’s the right thing to do, I…I won’t come back after that,” Wilbur sighs, mirroring Lewis’ sitting position and crossing his arms over his knees, “And I’m sorry it’s gonna be awkward for a while. I gotta admit, when we started doing this the last thing on my mind was how it was gonna play out on your end.”

The tension is broken slightly when Wilbur lays his head on his folded arms and looks over at Lewis with a smile too big and too genuine not to comfort him, “Most parents worry that their kids will grow up to hate them. You gotta worry about yours loving you _too_ much.”

Lewis returns the smile and huffs an almost-laugh through his nose, like he might have found the words humorous in a different situation.  
  
“Alright, well, I better head off,” Wilbur says when they fall too quiet for too long. He gets out of bed and roots around in the pile of clothing on the floor to pick out what’s his.

As he redresses, Lewis suggests, “When you go back there today, this will be the first time that you’ll know what we did together. I’ll have known for years. You gotta like…we gotta have a code word or something, to let me know that you know.”

“Sure,” Wilbur says, pulling his jeans up his skinny legs, distracted with buttoning them but still listening, “What do you want it to be?”  
  
“There was one child at the orphanage who was adopted and her new parents moved to Tallahassee. The name always stuck with me for some reason. Tallahassee.”  
  
“Dude, I’m gonna forget that.”  
  
“You better not forget it. You have to tell it to me as soon as you get back.”

“Fine, fine, fine, Tallahassee, got it,” Wilbur promises, now fully dressed. He crosses the room once more and places one knee on the bed, leaning down on it to give Lewis one more kiss, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go have a really awkward conversation with my dad.”  
  
“Good luck,” Lewis says, and he finds that he’s actually smiling now.

Wilbur climbs out the window into his time machine and he’s gone.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

 

The time machine lands soundlessly, twenty-five years into the future.

Before getting out, Wilbur reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a small calendar. Ever since he had first gone back in time and met his dad when he was thirteen, Lewis had made him promise that if Wilbur ever came back, he would do so linearly.

If he didn’t keep track of the exact day, he could come back on a Saturday trying to pick up where they left off on a Sunday, or worse, he could come back in 2012 trying to communicate with someone not up to speed on all that happened in 2013.

It also served well that young Lewis wasn’t haunted by a boy who never aged throughout his entire youth, so it made sense that Wilbur came back consistently in the right order so they could age together.

So, if Wilbur chose not to visit Lewis for a month, as they agreed, he could not get that month back. The earliest he could visit him was thirty days afterwards and that month would be forever lost.

Wilbur marks the current date with a red pen and writes the word “Tallahassee” over it before stepping out onto the plush grass of the lawn.

He pulls at the hem of his shirt and looks down to make sure he hadn’t put it on backwards or anything that would make the situation even more uncomfortable.

He inhales deeply and walks inside to fulfill his promise.

As usual, all the Robinson residents are occupied with their own interests and it doesn’t take much to make it to his father’s room inconspicuously.

Lewis—Cornelius—is sitting at his desk, tinkering with his latest invention when Wilbur knocks and asks to come in.

“Hey, Dad,” Wilbur says hesitantly. Cornelius puts down a screwdriver and halts several bolts from rolling off of the table.

“Wilbur, come in,” Cornelius says quietly.

Wilbur closes the door behind him and makes his way over to the desk. There truly was no good way to start such a conversation and Wilbur always was the type of person to dive head first into things so he explains, “I was told to tell you…Tallahassee.”

“Yes, I,” Cornelius coughs, a lucent cover-up for his apprehension, “I have today marked on my calendar that I, uh, should be expecting this.”

“How?”  
  
“Well, the event took place on July 15, 2013. We were eighteen years old then. I knew if you were to return home to continue your own timeline in a linear manner you would return on July 15, 2038. Shortly after that I knew I should be expecting this conversation.”  
  
“Ugh, math,” Wilbur groans and it somehow makes the situation easier, despite the fact that Cornelius was labeling it something as trite as _the event._

“So, you know what that means, then. Say it,” Wilbur grins, still reveling in the man’s inherent ability to blush when it came to sex-related things.

Cornelius almost doesn’t want to take the bait, but he understands his position as the supposed responsible adult in the room. He adjusts his glasses and feigns relaxation, “Well, today would be the first time that you and I…consummated our relationship.”

Wilbur’s smile breaks wide across his face, “ _First_ time?”

Cornelius instantly realizes his error and runs a hand over his face, looking quite like a parent now, “You always find a way to get me to spoil the future, don’t you.”

“No man, that’s awesome. See, when I left it was kinda uncertain whether you wanted to continue this, I said I’d wait a month—“  
  
“I know, I know, I was there.”

There is a pause and Cornelius can’t believe even after all these years he’s still allowing Wilbur to fluster him. Wilbur is beaming, but Cornelius is not.

“Wilbur, have a seat, please.”

The dark haired boy cocks his head but pulls up a swivel chair from a desk across the room. He moves to sit beside his father, leaning on the desk with one elbow.

Cornelius begins very slowly, as if he is explaining something he only wants to say once, wanting it to be extremely clear, “The reason I wanted you to come to me today is because I wanted to know how I would feel about…all that happened between us, once I was this age. After I had raised you, after I had grown up.”

Wilbur’s smile fades and his eyes search Cornelius’ face. Nervousness drops cold into his stomach, “And?”

Cornelius sighs, running a hand through his trademark hair, staring hard at the floor tiles, “I don’t regret it. I mean, obviously it was something I let happen more than once…”

Wilbur doesn’t care for the way he says ‘let happen’ like it wasn’t something they were both actively involved in.

“But now I have to tell you: On June 3, 2014, we have to stop.”

There is a silence filled only with the small sound of Wilbur swallowing hard. His brow furrows upwards and he thinks maybe he just didn’t hear him right, “What do you mean?”

“Around that time, I start to date your mother. I need you to let me fall in love with her, Wilbur. I’m…” Cornelius’ eyes flick to the floor before rising once more with heavy effort, “I’m going to need you to let me go.”  
  
Wilbur laughs uncomfortably; it wasn’t like his dad to overlook things, “Well, sure, I mean I get that I have to be _born_ , but you asked me to always visit you linearly. If I stop coming to you after you meet Franny, there’s no going back, I’d never see you young again.”

“Exactly,” Cornelius says, and it’s the worst word that could have possibly followed.

Wilbur shakes his head, mouth open slightly, but the words aren’t coming. Just hours ago he had shown this man how desperately he loved him. But hours for Wilbur was years for Cornelius and it made such a world of difference.

“It couldn’t have lasted more than a year, Wilbur. We were lucky to even have that time.”

 _Couldn’t have lasted_ , he says. _Couldn’t_ , like it was obvious, like they both should have known. Wilbur refuses to believe that. He won’t.

“We have time now,” Wilbur tries to stop his voice from quavering. It didn’t matter what age he was, Wilbur’s adoration for him was painfully timeless. Wilbur stands up and leans into him but Cornelius turns his face to the side, disallowing the kiss.  
  
“Wilbur, please.”

The younger boy freezes, neither advancing nor retreating, trying to give Cornelius the time to realize that this was a mistake; but Cornelius simply shakes his head, no.

“I’m sorry, I can’t anymore.”  
  
Wilbur’s head is spinning. He must look pathetic because Cornelius takes pity on him, offering gently, “But…I still love you.”

“Sure,” Wilbur says but the word is hollow. He knows what type of love Cornelius means and it’s not the one he wants.

He removes himself from the older man, walking as calmly as he can out of the workshop.

How could such polar opposite events take place less than twenty-four hours apart? To be so full of love one moment and so shattered the next?

Now he was painfully reminded of his own words, no one had attempted a relationship like this before so no one knew what to expect—what was _normal._

This was the price he paid for wanting to try.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

 

Wilbur wakes up the very next day, dresses, and immediately heads out to the time machine. He punches in the date for August 15, 2013, one month after he said he would return to Lewis.

As per usual, Lewis is occupied with some new invention and Wilbur has to tap on the window to get him to notice his arrival.

“Hey,” Wilbur says, swinging in through the open frame.

“Hey,” Lewis answers, friendly enough.

“So…did you have enough time to think?”  
  
Wilbur tries his best to let the words come out without any hint of what had happened the day before. He figures if he’s going to get rejected twice, he might as well take them both out as soon as possible. Still the back of his mind is lit with a glimmer of hope, burning around the words _first time._

He’s so used to having the upper hand with his knowledge of the future but now everything was a mystery to him and it was hard to see how this would unfold. He doesn’t like being vulnerable.

Lewis raises his eyebrows, shrugs, and walks over to him. Before Wilbur can speak again, he receives his answer in the form of a gentle kiss. The blonde cups his face and waits for Wilbur to relax after going rigid at the initial touch.

“Yeah,” Lewis says when they break, “I thought about it a lot and I can…I mean I’m…I’m okay with this.”

“You’re sure?” Wilbur asks in quiet exhale trembling with relief, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Lewis whispers before running a hand through Wilbur’s black hair, “You okay? I mean, this is still something that _you_ want, right?”  
  
The house is quiet as Wilbur wraps his arms around Lewis’ waist, burying his face into his shoulder and pressing himself as close to him as physically possible, “Of course. Absolutely. God, it’s good to hear you say that.”

Lewis almost wants to laugh until he realizes that Wilbur is actually being perfectly sincere about how worried he was about his answer. Instead, he strokes is back quietly, “How long did you wait before you came back? Did you wait out the month or did you come right after you left the first time?”

“I waited a day.”  
  
“Just a day, huh?” Lewis says as Wilbur pulls back, and Wilbur can see just how badly Lewis is trying not to enjoy the turn of tables. For the first time, Wilbur is the flustered one.  
  
“Shut up,” Wilbur grins, happiness bubbling up in his core, “Excuse me for being really fucking in love with you.”  
  
“Language,” Lewis jests, just because it’s such a parental thing to say. Their laughter quiets when their lips are pressed once more.

Wilbur tugs upwards at the bottom of Lewis’ shirt and Lewis helps him get it the rest of the way off. His skin is hot and soft beneath Wilbur’s hands and he wishes things can stay like this forever.

They say ‘only fools live in the past’ but Wilbur dismisses that philosophy because he’s pretty sure the guy who coined the expression never owned a time machine.

Lewis’ tongue is hot on his now; their kisses have evolved to being open, breathy, and frantic. They break only for a fraction of a second for Wilbur to remove his own shirt and rejoin only briefly before Lewis tastes down his neck, chest, and navel, falling to his knees to do so.

It’s a nice change, Lewis making the first moves, so of course Wilbur has to tease him about it, “Man, if this is how eager you are after waiting a month, maybe I should space out our meetings a little more.”

Lewis rolls his eyes and works at getting Wilbur’s jeans open. The button snaps loudly and the zipper hums down its metallic road.

Of course Wilbur wouldn’t dare wait that long again, not after he knew that something this good had a time limit. But there was no need to let Lewis know about that just yet.

“By the way…did you tell future me about Tallahassee?”  
  
Wilbur doesn’t want to talk about that but Lewis stops undressing him and it is clear that things aren’t going to progress unless he gives him an answer, “Yeah, you were pretty cool with it. You said you didn’t regret anything.”

Lewis looks down and smiles to himself, as if he had received validation for the choice he had made.

“Good,” he says so quietly that it’s meant more for himself than Wilbur, “That’s good.”

Wilbur had been honest. Not mentioning June third was not being untruthful, but it was rather a choice of careful exclusion. No need to worry over something that wasn’t an immediate obstacle.

“Lewis,” Wilbur says gently, nudging a finger under his chin to make him look upwards. He points to his still-concealed erection and whispers, “ _Keep moving forward_ ,” which makes Lewis stand and tackle him backwards onto the bed.

They only silence their laughter when they decide to just lay horizontal and both go in for it at the same time.

 

 

  
  
\--

 

 

 

Things are so good for the longest time that Wilbur almost forgets to feel awkward around his father whenever he returns to his own time.

They’re cordial with each other and things settle back down to whatever they considered standard before this, but Cornelius must think it’s because Wilbur has accepted that the best thing that ever happened to him had a countdown clock.

Wilbur hasn’t.

The summer of 2013 goes so well that Wilbur swears he’s not going back in time but rather into a dream where everything is better. He gets in that time machine and time doesn’t matter; it’s just a vessel to take him to the place where the person he loves resides, like an ordinary car ride.

He knows how dangerous it is to blur the lines but he does it anyway because it would kill him to stop.

When the cold air of a November night creeps in through the window sill and Wilbur is bundled up with Lewis in his bed, that is the first time Lewis says, “I love you.”  
  
Of course, they’d both always known this and Wilbur never had a problem saying it himself, but to have the words returned without a prompt was a really big deal. Wilbur kisses him so fervently that Lewis almost can’t breathe. That was the _I love you_ he wanted.

Wilbur doesn’t come for Christmas, it would be too conspicuous if Lewis were to be occupied on a holiday that his adopted parents had taken off for him, but he comes the day after.

“Happy Holidays,” He says, putting a small, colorfully wrapped box on his desk. Lewis raises his eyebrows skeptically—he’d been very specific that he didn’t want anything major about his future revealed, but Wilbur rolls his eyes and says, “It’s not gonna spoil anything, just open it.”

It’s a small box of candy that hadn’t been invented yet, sweets from the future. It turns out Lewis really likes them and Wilbur says playfully, “Oh, in that case, I won’t bring you any more. That way you’ll have something to look forward to.”

Lewis has a present for him as well. It’s a photograph of them both together that they had taken a month ago. It’s simple and encased in an inglorious frame, but it is exactly what Wilbur wanted.

It’s March when Wilbur lies on his back, breathless and sweaty. He grabs at Lewis’ hips, helping him sit down on his lap. Lewis doesn’t usually care for being the one penetrated but he’s been getting better at it.  
  
“I got it, I got it,” Lewis huffs, thighs trembling and Wilbur takes this as his cue to let go. Wilbur rolls his hips to meet him as he rises and sits and they rock together.

After they peak, Lewis falls forward, hands balled into fists on Wilbur’s chest, face buried into his ear, “I love you,” he sobs, “I love you.”  
  
“Shhhh,” Wilbur soothes, running his hand through Lewis’ damp but still-wild hair. The first time Lewis had said those words he was admitting it to Wilbur, but now it seems that he was admitting it to himself. Wilbur holds him close that night.

June comes like a rent collector. Wilbur thought he might try to prepare for what he would never forgive himself for, but soon realized that absolutely nothing he did would soften the blow.

On the first day of the month they make love again and it is too perfect and Lewis is too happy for Wilbur to tell him.

On the second, Wilbur doesn’t visit him at all because he just fucking can’t.

Then, that’s it. June 3, 2039 arrives. Wilbur wakes up in his own time and makes his way down into the kitchen to find that his father is already seated at the breakfast table.

“Good morning,” Cornelius says, delicately.

“Is it?” Wilbur asks, coldly.

Cornelius sighs and stares into his cup of coffee. For a moment Wilbur thinks that the man might try rationalizing things or explaining the unchangeable situation to him again, but instead the inventor just breathes quietly through his nose.

Wilbur wants to run to him, crawl into his lap, and beg him to see reason. He doesn’t.

There were times when Wilbur could almost see the boy he loved inside that man, and then there were days when the two were so separate Wilbur swore they could never have been the same person.

He simply stares at the adult across from him, slightly irritated that Cornelius already knew how the events of today would unfold: What Wilbur would say, how Lewis would react, and Wilbur is practically trembling because he can’t learn these things until he’s lived through them himself.

“You know what to do. Just…say good-bye.”  
  
“Do I get to tell you why? Do you know that I’m leaving you so you can meet Franny or do I just have to seem like an asshole? You already know she’s liked you since the seventh grade science fair, does that really count as spoiling your fut—“  
  
“You can’t tell me about Franny. That has to happen…naturally.”  
  
Wilbur sucks in air hard through his nose, looking up towards the harsh ceiling lights so he won’t cry.

“It’ll be okay,” Cornelius says and Wilbur can’t tell if he’s just using the generic line people used to show sympathy or actually knows it to be true.

“Will it?” Wilbur questions, hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

“Of course. You were born.”

Wilbur growls childishly and makes his way out the door, as if he would jeopardize his own existence just to rebel against that statement.

The hollow metal of the trashcan holds the angry noise of the calendar being discarded in similar discontentment.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

 

Wilbur doesn’t knock on the window right away.

He watches Lewis plug in wires and turn bolts until he knows that he’ll never be this in love with anyone else.

Finally, he accepts that delaying it makes it exponentially harder by the second so he forces himself to bring his knuckles to the glass.

Lewis lets him in, grinning, “Hey, come in. Just let me put this stuff away.”

“Thanks,” Wilbur says, and the word instantly sounds out of place. He’s never said it before whenever Lewis had let him in and it sounds too formal now. He wonders if Lewis notices, but he doesn’t.

“I thought maybe we could go out today, try out my latest invention. It’s got a helicopter propeller and needs space to fly.”

Wilbur’s mouth is so dry that he must not answer fast enough. That, combined with the look on his face, must alert Lewis that something is off, “Or we could stay in? Hey, you okay?”

Wilbur swallows through the dry catch in his throat and ultimately chokes out, “Can we talk?”  
  
It’s a bad choice of words; Wilbur knows this because that’s exactly the question Lewis had asked him before they decided on a month-long break.

Lewis is scared now and abandons whatever desk-sorting he was doing and walks over to him.

Suddenly, Wilbur wonders if this would have been easier is he had told Lewis about it from the start. Maybe if Lewis had known ahead of time it would have somehow made this easier. Wilbur wonders if he was selfish not to inform him, desperate to keep this as perfect as he could for as long as possible. It doesn’t matter now.

Wilbur tries to compose himself but it doesn’t work. He stares hard at the floor, hands defensively rooted in his jean pockets and bites his lip.

“Hey,” Lewis says, a little worried, bringing a hand up to cup Wilbur’s face, “What’s wrong? Let me help.”

It absolutely breaks Wilbur’s heart to remove Lewis’ hand. His next breath comes out shaking as he takes the first step on the road that leads to the end, “I can’t…see you anymore.”

Lewis’ eyes are as blue and wide as the sky. Wilbur doesn’t even dare to make eye contact or he swears he would fall into them and never get back up.

“What are you talking about?”

“Today is the last time I’m coming to see you,” Wilbur sniffs, trying to hold himself together. Maybe if Lewis could hate him, it would make this process easier.

But Lewis doesn’t become angry, it’s so much worse. He becomes confused, frightened, “Wh…Why? How can this…”

“I can’t spoil your future,” Wilbur chokes out, trying so hard to be stoic but the redness forming on his nose and under his eyes would give him away if Lewis could focus enough to notice.

“So it is future-related. You’re not leaving me because—“  
  
“Of course it’s future related,” Wilbur says too harshly, even for his own ears, and it shakes the first tear loose. He scratches it away before it can run.

 _I’m not leaving_ _because I want to. I’m not leaving because I don’t love you._

“It must be pretty important,” Lewis says, too melancholy for the words to be bitter. His voice is strained and Wilbur hears the tears in his voice before he sees them.

“It is,” Wilbur agrees, quiet but stern.  
  
Wilbur is ripping down the middle. There was nothing he wants more than to grab him, hold him, cradle his back and head until Lewis has stopped crying. For both of their sakes, that’s exactly what he couldn’t do. He stands in place, staring out the window, knowing that the next time he climbs out of it, it will be the last time he does.

Silence chokes the room as both boys stand before each other, neither making eye contact. Wilbur stifles his crying by sniffing loudly a few times but Lewis just lets the tears run soundlessly, shoulders shaking, head bent to the floor.

For a moment Wilbur almost thinks he should leave, just like this. Nothing either of them could say would fix anything at this point and it was better just to let the healing begin. Better to let Lewis forget about him as soon as possible—that was the point of this, right?

Before Wilbur can turn away, Lewis’ arms are wrapped around his neck and he is kissing him, ungracefully, needy, and Wilbur is kissing him back.

God, he said he wouldn’t do this.

Wilbur’s hands find themselves in Lewis’ hair and clamped around his back, pressing them together, hard enough to hurt. He kisses down Lewis’ neck and by the time he gets to his shoulder, Wilbur finally lets himself break and he sobs into the warm fabric.

“How long did you know you’d have to leave me?” Lewis murmurs, wetly.

“A year,” Wilbur barely manages, voice stifled into Lewis’ collarbone.

“You let me fall in love with you for _a year?_ ” Lewis groans.

Wilbur makes a painful sound and pulls back. He knows now that he should have either told Lewis from the start or never come to visit him at all.

“Yeah, I’m a jerk, okay? Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t try to make me hate you before you leave.”

It shocks Wilbur that Lewis calls him out so easily. Sometimes the more you shut yourself out from others, the more transparent you become.

“Do you have to leave right now?”  
  
Wilbur can’t believe he’s saying, “It should probably be sooner than later.”

Lewis removes his glasses and dries his eyes slowly. Time seems like it has stopped, but the real problem is that it wouldn’t slow down. When he has collected himself enough, Lewis simply states mournfully, “I’m never going to love anyone like I loved you.”

Wilbur raises his eyes to the ceiling and huffs out an almost-laugh at the irony. Somewhere in this town there is a girl with a cowlick alarmingly like his, waiting for her opportunity to ask out her longtime crush.

“Don’t say that.”  
  
“It’s true.”  
  
“It’s not true,” and Wilbur says those words with such unshakable certainty that Lewis is mortified to believe them.

From some unimaginable reserve of whatever strength he had left, Wilbur manages to pull himself together enough to be the strong one, he at least owes Lewis that.

“You’re gonna be okay, Lewis. You have a long time to get over this.”  
  
“And you?”

Wilbur shakes his head honest, regretful, _no._ But before Lewis can protest, Wilbur fits their lips together in a simple kiss that tastes like goodbye, “I love you,” Wilbur breathes and puts his fingers up to Lewis’ lips immediately after, “Don’t say it back…please…” Wilbur’s hand falls and the world feels heavy, “A lot depends on that.”

The time machine’s interior is cold, hard steel beneath him. It used to be a vessel to a certain kind of heaven but, after this, Wilbur can’t imagine ever getting in it again.

 

 

  
\--

 

 

 

No lights are turned on in Wilbur’s room. After spending the majority of his eighteenth year in 2013, his own room seemed more like the occasional place of rest rather than something that was exclusively his.

He makes it back at 10:00 p.m. after leaving at 10:00 a.m., which is the first time he’d misaligned his timing, but he knows at this point that it didn't matter.

Typically, he would document how much time he had spent at Lewis’ on any given day and return to his own time that amount of hours later, so it appeared to his family that he had simply spent the day out, perhaps with friends. The only person who knew better was Cornelius, who never said anything about it.

But now it is dark and all Wilbur wants to do is crawl into bed. Mental exhaustion turns to physical and he barely manages to make it under his covers before allowing himself to quietly weep.

Ten minutes later, still too premature to be greeted with any kind of composure, a knock falls on his door.

“Wilbur? Can I come in?”

Wilbur doesn’t answer. He lays motionless face down, not caring one way or the other, no longer passionate about anything.

Cornelius enters as quietly as he can, closing the door behind him. Wilbur knows that his father sits down on the bed beside him when the mattress dips, but he still refuses to move.

For the longest time, or what seems like a long time because everything blurs when drenched in misery, neither talk nor move.

Wilbur has nothing to say to him. It would appear so easy to confront the source of his affliction, the one who he simultaneously loved but also made him want to never get up again.

It wasn’t easy at all. At this point, all Lewis and Cornelius shared was a body. The two individuals behind those sky-colored eyes were entirely different. They were lifetimes apart. The man who sat next to Wilbur now was no longer his.

After a miniature eternity, a hand falls light and unmoving on Wilbur’s back. It’s just a touch to let him know Cornelius is still there, that despite all that Wilbur believed, maybe he wanted to help his son through this.

“Do you want to talk abou—“

“No,” Wilbur interrupts. He wriggles out from under Cornelius’ hand and sits up, wiping the tears off his face like he was mad that they were there, “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“There’s a lot to talk about,” Cornelius says so gently that Wilbur wants to believe him. The room is still dark so when Wilbur looks over he can just barely make out the outline of concern over his father’s face. The man’s brow is furrowed upward, like he’s the one afraid of being hurt.

If Wilbur wasn’t so shaken he might have taken pity on him. Instead he sniffles, grumbling, “There’s no point in me arguing, right? It just makes me look like an idiot because I’m literally resisting my own creation.”

“Wilbur, we both know it’s more complicated than that. You’re allowed to be upset about this.”

The younger swings his legs over the side of the bed, rests his elbows on his knees, and holds his face in his hands. He breathes for a moment just to make sure he still can, making sure he wasn’t as lifeless as he actually felt.

“You were…crying,” Wilbur says so, so quietly, like he can’t believe it had to come to that.

“I know,” Cornelius says delicately and the next words come out as a timid confession, “…It broke my heart.”  
  
Cornelius moves a hand to encircle Wilbur’s slumped shoulders but Wilbur straightens his back before he can, “Then why not let me tell you _why_ I had to leave? I had to make you think I was a jerk—”

“I didn’t think you were a jerk,” Cornelius says honestly, voice low and steady. Even his voice was different from Lewis’, whose tone still held the underlying lightness of youth. It seemed the more time passed, the more differences Wilbur noticed; whether that was good or bad, Wilbur couldn’t decide. Cornelius continues,

“I was upset for a while, but after I met Franny I kind of understood. I mean, what else could it have been? Why else would you leave me? We both knew I’d have to meet her eventually; it wasn’t as big of a mystery as you thought. I _had_ to be heartbroken Wilbur...or else I never would have let myself move on.”

Cornelius finally completes the half-hug he tried before and pulls Wilbur into his side, “I figured it out and forgave you long ago.”

Wilbur lets his limbs go limp and doesn’t resist the touch. He’s losing energy by the second, too tired to fight back. When he speaks again, his voice is gravelly and rough from crying, “And now you love her.”

“Well, yes. Wilbur, I told you that I didn’t regret anything and I meant it. I was happy when we were togehter. But I was with you one year and I’ve been with Franny twenty. There’s a lot that happens in between building a life with someone.”

Wilbur huffs through his nose: a silent, joyless laugh at his own situation, “I must be the first boy in history who is upset that his parents are in love.”

The statement is a bitter joke, not even an attempt to lighten the mood but rather a witticism directed at himself, only made to show recognition of the situation's outlandishness.

Cornelius won’t let him have it, though. He won’t let his son drape wit over his sadness in an attempt to hide it. Instead, he responds with understanding and his best attempts at comfort, “You were the first boy in history to do a lot of things.”

They sit in silence for a few moments more. The entire conversation was pocketed with awkward, quiet areas but they both figure that as long as neither of them are screaming, it must be progress.  
   
Eventually, Wilbur sits up and Cornelius lets him. He’s not crying anymore and decides he needs to collect his own closure, because all that his dad was offering him was compassion, not a finite end to something that had really mattered.

He needs to have it come full circle, needs to know that the man next to him truly used to be Lewis and he’s not hearing all this from a man who barely remembers the magnitude of passion in what they once had.

“Just tell me...tell me that you loved me.”  
  
“You already know that’s true. I told you that before when we were…together.”  
  
“No, I need to hear it from _you_. I need _you_ to tell me right now so I can still believe that the Lewis I love is still in there somewhere.”

For the first time all night, Wilbur turns to look at him and the ferocity in his dark eyes shocks Cornelius into listening well.

Twice now has Wilbur had to endure the crippling sting of complete emotional whiplash. Cornelius never had to go through that, he couldn’t understand what Wilbur needed from him now, but Wilbur tries desperately to explain it nonetheless. 

“You seem like a different person who walks around with his memories, do you know how heartwrenching that is for me? You’ve had twenty years to forget about this but it happened to me _a half hour ago_ ,” Wilbur’s chest is heaving by the time he finishes his sentence, “Please…back then…did you love me?”

“I don’t think either answer will make you feel better.”

Wilbur wants to grab him by the shirt collar. Frustration and heartbreak were a dangerous combination. He’s so full that he’s past his breaking point. He’s shattered through the glass, he’s out there, ten miles deep into the stars.

The space between their lips closes so quickly that neither have time to breathe. They each suck in air through their noses is two, long hisses.

Cornelius reels but doesn’t push Wilbur away. He lets him have this. He has to.

The younger shifts his weight, leaning into him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his jaw. He runs his tongue along Cornelius’ bottom lip, asking. Cornelius places his hands on Wilbur’s waist, holding him upright. He opens his mouth, lets Wilbur deepen the kiss and, for a moment, he is Lewis.

It surprises them both when Wilbur is the first one to pull away, lips breaking free with a wet click, “It won’t make me feel better,” Wilbur concedes, continuing the conversation, “But I still need to hear it.”

Cornelius readjusts his glasses and Lewis is gone. Still, the man is in awe of the fact that, just for a moment, he had lost himself two decades in the past. For a fraction of a second, he had been broken where he had thought himself unbreakable and, for that, he owes Wilbur his forfeit. 

“Yes...Yes, I loved you.”  
  
Cornelius is relieved and Wilbur is proud of himself for pulling back, sitting quietly and separate from the man next to him. The next time Wilbur speaks, he does so looking at the floor and means it only for himself,

“Yeah.”

There’s a bittersweetness in that word. A contentment, a letting go.

_Yeah. We had something great._

Wilbur doesn’t raise his eyes as Cornelius gets up to leave. They both know that not much else could be done at the moment and it was best that they each just get some sleep. Cornelius makes it to the door before asking softly,  
  
“Are you going to be okay?”  
  
“They say time is the greatest healer,” Wilbur answers in a sigh.

Cornelius nods like he knows the truth of this statement better than anyone and the door is shut.

Both time machines are disassembled the next day. Destroying every temptation was best.

Knowing all that he knows now, Wilbur wonders if he should have ever pursued a relationship with Lewis at all. However, it was clear that Cornelius had thought it all to be worth it, or else he would have dismantled the vessels before Wilbur turned eighteen. Wilbur never brings that up to his dad, but both of them know it.

It was a brief chapter in their lives that burned too fiercely to last, but still one that they both wanted to keep.

Days make it easier, years give him peace, but the picture of them that Lewis had given Wilbur for Christmas still takes permanent residence in Wilbur’s desk drawer. It reminds him of the past but more importantly it urges the importance of a progressive, limitless future.

“Yeah, I know,” Wilbur will smile at it sometimes, “Keep moving forward.”

 

 

 

\--

  
  
The End

 

 

 


End file.
